lOi 



the attainment of a nobler object ; like the enthusiastic Alexander, he 

 must conquer for the love of it. The cultivator of the soil must have a 

 farmer's education, a farmer's taste, a farmer's dress. The soil, like a 

 fierce animal, seems to be more kind and pliable, when handled by one 

 who understands its nature ; encourage then, Agricultural Societies, as 

 you value your own interest. 



Notwithstanding some discouragements under which we have all 

 labored, we ought to be grateful for the many advantages we enjoy. In 

 comparison with the older States, our struggles have not been arduous 

 or severe ; we have entered into a land of promise, without fighting our 

 way through hostile States, into a land of the purest fountains and most 

 abundant food. We live in an age when genius and science have worked 

 out wonderful results, in an age of unsurpassed discoveries, and we have 

 now the fall benefit of those results and of those discoveries, and are now 

 springing into the full maturity of life, while other States have had to 

 pass the infant's progress, a state of weakness and imbecility. We have 

 not been obliged to go armed to the church or to the field of labor. All 

 is peace and tranquility, we have a healthy climate, and a soil of easy 

 culture, we have access to a great variety of the most improA'ed agricul- 

 tural implements. We have more within our reach, to gratify taste and 

 luxury than we ought to buy. What State within twenty years of its 

 first settlement, has emerged with less labor and less violence, to as high 

 a state of refinement ? 



Situated, as we are, in one of the best agricultural counties in the 

 State, containing lands well adapted for tillage, for orchards and for 

 stock raising ; when the railroad penetrates our borders, and gives us, at 

 all times, access to the Atlantic Seaboard, what more can the farmer 

 ask or need, but well directed industry, to crown his efforts ? 



Distinguished men in all ages have belonged to our fraternity. It is 

 the oldest society on record. The ruling passion of the immortal Wash- 

 ington was for farming, and no vocation has been so honored by the 

 good and the great as that of the agriculturist. Shepherds and hus- 

 bandmen have been the chosen recipients of those divine messages 

 which have brought peace to man. It is an employment congenial to 

 our nature, and it exerts upon it a great moral influence. No farmer 

 can go into his field without observing a heavenly power aiding his own. 

 The man who cannot harmonize with nature's laws, whose perversity 

 runs counter to her great commands, must give up farming, and he gene- 



